So, About That New Bring Me The Horizon Album...

Bring Me The Horizon dropped their newest album Amo, and I don't think I've ever seen so many mixed reactions on an album since Suicide Silence's self titled. Too be fair though, the band did say before the release of Amo that this would be their most pop driven album to date, so I find it a little funny that people are acting so surprised. I mean, they even compared what their new sound was gonna be to twenty one pilots.

For what it's worth, I will say I did genuinely enjoy some tracks off of the album. To me, it's not the worst album ever recorded and I like parts of it, but I know for a fact not everyone shares that same opinion. Just looking at the reception from this album you see three sides:

"BMTH is dead/Bring Me The Metalcore

"Omg, it's important for bands to experiment and try something new!"

"You guys need to grow up and mature like the band did, they're in their 30s now and don't wanna play angry teenage music!"

Okay, hold the flabbergasting phone. I do completely understand all sides. Yeah, it makes sense for fans to expect BMTH to produce the same sound that made them enjoy the band in the first place, and at the same time, adding something new with each album does make the music more interesting. But do people not realize it's entirely possible to change your sound without alienating your fanbase?

Experimenting vs Selling Out

Shout Out To My Friend Emerson For Letting Me Use This!

Whenever a band drastically changes their sound the whole experimenting with new sounds is ALWAYS brought up. Linkin Park, Metallica, In Flames, you name it. I've talked about this before with some friends on this amino, and frankly I wanna know why all these modern melodic metalcore bands go down the exact same musical direction. Bullet For My Valentine, Underoath, Memphis May Fire, Asking Alexandria, Of Mice & Men, even All That Remains at a point in time all went down the same radio pop rock style.

Am I saying all of their recent work is garbage? No, but I am saying even though the new sound might be new to the band, it most definitely isn't something new to a fan of bands like this, it's more or less just "oh look another band that changed their sound to a more mainstream pop rock and electropop sound."

Take a look at Ulver, this is a band that I would say "experiments" with new sounds. They've done it all from black metal, ambient, electronic, folk, etc. What I'm trying to get at is there's so many other genres to "experiment" with aside from EDM and pop rock. I don't usually like to label a band as Sellouts, but if they experimented with jazz, blues, etc. people would probably be more reluctant to label them as such. I mean yeah, there's almost always gonna be a couple fans that hate the new sound no matter what, but I'd most definitely argue a band like Paramore experimented better than BMTH did. Even so I would honestly say that people should stop trying to defend BMTH from being labeled as sellouts because from the interviews Oli has given, it's almost blatantly obvious.

Oli Sykes: There Hasn't Been A Rock Icon For The Last 30 Years

"Did he just delete the 90s?" - Slamburger With Fries

There was one thing I haven't covered as yet and that's the whole "they've grown up and matured" deal. I understand the members of BMTH more than likely don't listen any metal music anymore, and in this case not listening to metal music but still making it probably isn't fun. But you seriously think that's because of their age? It's entirely possible to make metal music that isn't angry. I don't exactly know why people bring age up. Of course though, Oli low-key mocks the fans that miss their old music in the chorus of heavy metal.

Bring Me The Horizon - heavy metal (Lyric Video) ft. Rahzel

Overall, I don't think the album is that bad, it's got some good tracks. But the way some of their fans go about defending the new sound is kind of annoying, especially with Oli's take on the metal community. For all I know, drastically changing their sound like this might just cause them to end up like In Flames. Sacrificing the old fans for new mainstream ones but yet don't actually increase in popularity, or who knows, maybe doing this will give mainstream music listeners a new gateway to metal music.

Anyway I know this is a shorter blog than usual, I just wanted to write down my thoughts on this topic really quick. If you want to discuss further about this topic feel free to comment your thoughts below! Thanks for reading!

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It’s not bad, but I, for one, don’t think the album is perfect. I’m a huge fan of this band, but there’s just something wrong with this album and it’s that many songs on here sound pretty generic. The song “wonderful life” is the heaviest song, but the riffs are just a little too generic for a band like BMTH, and they’ve made more creative riffs than wonderful life, like Sleepwalking or Chelsea Smile. The album gets a 6/10 out of me and I don’t think it’s better than TTS but it’s still an enjoyable album just like TTS.

They are talented musicians, professionals ones. As a musician and vocalist, we have to respect other artists evolution. As a fan, we chose the bands and music that we want to listen. In fact, “Shadow of Moses” would be my favorite one always🤫🤘 :fire: (...Love this article, very professional opinion.)

I'm happy that their happy. I'm also pissed because I truly miss their heavy music. I also feel disrespected when people say shit like "they've changed, get a life" etc. Because it is the OG fans of their "heavy" sound that put them on the map. Carve your new path in life, just don't forget where you came from.

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